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Soft Pretzel Love

Hate: It’s the New Black

I have a hard time with extreme emotions. Good or bad, when something sends your psyche in one direction or the other with such force it causes almost physical pain, it just seems like not such a good thing to me. Kind of like a large sundae – a regular sized one is awesome, but too much of something and you’re yakking hot fudge through your nostrils.

Unfortunately, right now I am filled with one such extreme emotion: hate.

A mixture of anger, rage, sadness and total disappointment have culminated in the desire to express myself via a lead pipe. Fortunately, for myself and my criminal record, and the object of my hatred, I’m probably not going to follow through. But, we all need our fantasies, don’t we?

Of course, blood and gore fantasies aside, the fact remains that when someone in your life you love and trust turns out to be the polar opposite of what you’d thought they were, and they’d represented themselves to be, it’s devastating, and makes you question everything from who they actually are, to who you are and what’s wrong with you to allow yourself to be put in this situation.

That’s where I’m at right now, and I cannot even begin to fathom how long it’s going to take me to get back to center and who I remember I am.

But, at least I know who and what I’m not, and take comfort in the fact that I’m not a self-centered manipulative alcoholic who either cannot remember what I have or have not done or said, or choose to change history to better mesh with the version I’d rather have (tell me, which is more embarrassing? or less?).

Someone who cannot hold a job, friends or lovers save for the one person who is just as much a manipulative loser as myself, who all my friends and family dislike so much we had to get married in secret (Although we did tell our friends, just not our family members, what we were going to do) and, when we became pregnant, the universal response was, “God that sucks.”

And I’ve never consciously dragged anyone down with me in a feeble attempt to run from the pain-ridden, disastrous past I’ve created, only to turn around and fuck it up yet again, only this time for good.

Because, I take small comfort in the fact that I have learned, over the years, that the mantra, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” is not the rule to live by, and the demons will always follow, sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting to nudge you awake at 3 a.m., not matter what continent you’re on.

And not matter how lame it is, I always have a job, and my family and my friends who will gather around me to comfort me and cheer me up because, as neurotic as I can be, I have always been, and will hopefully always be, myself: drunk, sober, happy, sad, funny, annoying, making a fool of myself out on the dance floor. (see: Congrats Chris & Becky)

I just wish I didn’t have to feel such anger, hurt and resentment. But soon my city will be free of the west coast bullshit mindfuck, and the only other thing I want to know about the object of my hate is that he’s dead, however many years from now that may be. Although he’s certainly halfway there on his own….